Misleading Highway Safety Info’ from the NTSB – Part 2

In a post on April 25, 2016, titled “Your Car is a Public Health Tool” on the NTSB Safety Compass blog, NTSB Vice Chairman Dr. T. Bella Dinh-Zarr wrote about the number of road deaths suffered by the USA.

“In the last few decades of the 20th Century, motor vehicle deaths decreased from 50,000 per year to 30,000 deaths per year.”

“With the vision of a future with no motor vehicle crashes, deaths and injuries, it’s important that we continue to improve crash prevention technologies, while also striving for advances in technologies to improve vehicle crashworthiness, especially as it relates to occupant protection.”

I must address point #2 first because frankly it makes a mockery of point #1, quote: “In the last few decades of the 20th Century, motor vehicle deaths decreased from 50,000 per year to 30,000 deaths per year.” But no they didn’t — not even remotely!

U.S. road deaths were still at 41,945 in the year 2000 and remained above 40,000 per year until 2008 (n=37,261, which equates to a staggering, 40 percent error). That is by no means a part of the “last few decades of the 20th Century!” Then, inline with the recession, the number of deaths per year did start to fall dramatically, as road travel also fell due to the financial situation. Interestingly, many official bodies in the US road safety arena at this point started claiming that their respective programs had been tremendously successful and were indubitably responsible for the significantly reduced numbers of deaths. Perhaps nobody had taught these people that recessions cause such reductions in deaths and that when the recession ended the number of deaths could be expected to rise again. And boy, has it ever!

But there is one other point to be made: At no point in this period did the annual road deaths fall as low as the “30,000” claimed in point #2, above. According to ITS/IRTAD, the lowest figure was 32,479 (2011), so this in turn represents an eight percent error. This may seem insignificant but it was a very undesirable exaggeration, it never materialized, and was certainly unscientific!

So now lets go back to the first point above, the CDC claim that “Motor-Vehicle Safety [was] A 20th Century Public Health Achievement,” and the fact that the NTSB has seen fit to promote this claim on its blog. Really, NTSB (and CDC, too)? Both of your organizations must surely be aware that since at least the 1970s the USA has fallen further and further back, behind the much greater road safety improvements made by virtually every other developed nation in the world — greater rates of improvement and in some cases death rates that are now less than one-quarter of the rate in the USA.

To illustrate America’s poor rate of progress, one can turn to the ITS/OECD/IRTAD database 2009 — Long-term Trends, “Road User fatalities” for 1980, 1990, 2000… and [2007].” This shows that in 1980, the USA suffered 51,091 road deaths and in 2007 the number was down to 41,059 a reduction of 19.6 percent. This sounds quite good until one looks at the percentage reductions for the following countries over the same period:

Switzerland . . . . . . . . -68.2%

Germany . . . . . . . . . .. -67.1%

France . . . . . . . . . . . .. -65.8%

Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . -65.5%

Netherlands . . . . . . .. -64.5%

Portugal . . . . . . . . . .. -62.2%

Luxembourg . . . . . . .. -56.1%

Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . -55.5%

Australia . . . . . . . . . .. -50.6%

Great Britain . . . . . . . -50.5%

Slovenia . . . . . . . . . . . -47.5%

Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . -47.0%

Sweden . . . . . . . . . . .. -44.5%

Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -44.3%

Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . -41.7%

Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . -41.4%

Denmark . . . . . . . . . . -41.2%

Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . -41.1%

Iceland . . . . . . . . . . .. -40.0%

Norway . . . . . . . . . . . -35.6%

Finland . . . . . . . . . . . -31.0%

New Zealand . . . . . .. -29.3%

Hungary . . . . . . . . . . -24.4%

United States. . . . . .-19.6%

Poland . . . . . . . . . . . . – 7.0%

Korea . . . . . . . . . . . . . – 4.4%

Czech Republic . . . . . – 3.1%

Greece . . . . . . . . . . . .+14.6%

The countries finishing from 1st to 6th achieved more than three-times the improvement than did the USA, those from 7th to 10th more than 2.5-times more, and those from 11th to 19th did at least twice as well. Does anybody want to elaborate now about how on earth the comparatively poor performance by the USA is in any way the stated “20th Century public health achievement?” Such a claim, for such comparatively poor success, could easily be dismissed as mere propaganda.

Finally, there is no fault with the point #3, above, but it is effectively indisputable that the USA has fallen so far behind the rest of the developed world in this crucial field of road safety because the country has been far, far too introspective and has ignored all of the advances made elsewhere and how they have been achieved. Relying solely on technological advances that may still be a long way off in coming to full fruition is a weak-kneed approach. Many American lives undoubtedly can be saved by the USA immediately opening its eyes to other countries’ far greater success and emulating the methods used, without trying to re-invent the wheel and making a mess of it, as it has done — for example — in relation to America’s recent adoption and best-practice use of modern roundabouts (a failing of the FHWA)!

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Author: EddieWren

Eddie Wren is the CEO and Chief Instructor at Advanced Drivers of North America. His driver safety background is given at: http://www.advanceddrivers.com/ceochief-instructors-resumecvbio/
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